


Three in the Morning (Aftermath)

by mydetheturk



Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Mobsterswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydetheturk/pseuds/mydetheturk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's three in the morning and you're asleep. Yeah, sure. Doesn't matter anyway, someone's at your door, and whenever someone's around that early, it ain't good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three in the Morning (Aftermath)

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to thank my lovely roommate, [ScarletteFox718](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteFox718/pseuds/ScarletteFox718) for being a wonderful beta. And for putting up with me. And for listening to me complain about this while I was writing it because I was supposed to be writing a lab report.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and there may or may not be more concerning this particular AU, depending on how well I can get Inny, Officer Sn0wwy, and Deadeye to work with me.

Your boss was a woman and the only one who knew about it was you. You were perfectly happy to keep the two other members of the crew in the dark about it - it was her choice, her decision to make. She was a big girl, even though she wore the big boy panties.

Which was why you were confused as fuck when she showed up at your apartment at three in the fucking morning, looking like she's gone to fucking hell and back. You swear and pull her into your apartment, scouting the area just outside your door to see if anyone had followed her. Empty. Thank whatever deity may be watching for that, you didn't want to have to dispose of anyone because you promised you would stop doing things the messy way, and cleaning blood out of the hallway of your apartment falls under _messy_. Real messy.

Ushering your boss in, you take stock of her appearance. Ruffled would be a gentle word for how she looks. There's a bruise forming up by her eye, half swelling it, and she looks like her nose was bleeding at some point, because there are dried streaks of blood around it and on her lips. Her dress shirt is ripped and it looks like there's a bite mark on her shoulder. You take note her injuries as she pointedly doesn't say anything - or maybe she's too dazed to, if the fact that she's leaning heavily to the side says anything.

Fuck, you should have known something might happen. You'd kept her secret all through your years in the army - from the time you two were gods damned kids. Fuck. You sigh and pull her hands into yours, warming the cold digits. If your boss were anyone else, you'd rather fucking slit your own throat than do anything sappy. But your boss fucking needs you, needs you to pull her back together, just like you did when she first killed someone, all those years ago.

That's what the blank expression on her face reminds you of - those years in the army, then when the four of you fled to the desert, and you remember the smile she cracked when your group hit the city. It was half disparaging and half excited, and all of it had that fucking manic taint you'd come to associate with her after she'd had to sit in the sun for hours and days and slaughter men and women from so fucking far away.

That manic glint had finally disappeared from her smiles after a year or so, though they never stopped being dangerous. Not even now, almost eight damn years later. You almost wished she was smiling right now. Even her stupidly dangerous smirks were better than the blank look from so fucking long ago.

You throw one of your shitty blankets over her shoulders and go to the kitchen. It sounds damned stupid, but coffee is important, and you think it might actually bring her out of her funk. Hell if you know. You haven't seen her like this in years, not since you first got to the city and she fell asleep against you in the hotel room the four of you shared that first month.

You're grumbling to yourself when you hear the soft tap of feet - she's making noise, good, at least you can fucking hear her. She doesn't say anything as she pads her way to the tiny fucking table in the middle of your tiny fucking kitchen, that shitty blanket wrapped around her like the cloth from the desert.

Fuck everything.

You can't help but wonder if she fucking went looking for a fight, but then again, she's not you. She doesn't fight with people when she's in a mood, she plays fucking head games with them and the fact that she's actually hurt pisses you off more than her blank stare does. Growling, you damn near slam the mug of coffee down on the table in front of her, the cheerful Scotty dog facing her. She smiles at it, a soft smile you're pretty fucking sure you haven't seen in years.

Well shit. What the hell happened to her tonight? You know she won’t tell you if you ask and she doesn’t want you to know.

Which is why you weren't expecting her to start fucking talking.

"I was ambushed - someone didn't like that 'some upstart detective' was nosing around. Fools. As if I would be the one to go after their pathetic gang. Leave that to someone else. No, I was just walking, thinking. Clearing my head. Old demons, you know the type. I don't quite know what was in their heads, to think that they could attack me and get away with it." Her words are dark, complimented perfectly by that voice she has, rough from near two decades worth of cigarettes.

You wonder how anyone could be stupid enough to think she was a man. Sure, she had a smoker's voice. Sure, her hands were calloused from handling guns and rifles. The slash over one eye didn't help any either. Neither did the fact that you're damn near a hundred percent certain she doesn't even own a skirt or dress. There's no mistaking the slight burr when she's angry. The purr to her voice when you've done something perfectly for her. Fuck, you've known her so gods damned long that you can tell when she's smiling at you with her fucking voice instead of her fucking mouth. You fucking _know_ you know her better than either of the other two dunderheads in your crew, and yet sometimes you still can't tell what's on her mind.

"The fuck did they do?" you growl, reaching out for a knife even though you know she can handle herself. The look she gives you is an unamused one, but you prefer that one to the blank stare she had earlier.

"I'm fine. They can't do anything else, now." The tone to her voice stops you. You recognize it, though you haven't heard it since before the exile. She chuckles darkly at your expression, adding on, "They're gone. With prejudice, I might add."

"Fuck." You should have known. Your boss doesn't take threats to her personal self – or you and the crew – kindly, and if the four of you weren't what you were, you think she'd be much, much darker. You consider yourself fucking lucky that she's not as bad as she could be. She smiles at you, skin crinkling around that dead eye of hers. "Please tell me you didn't leave any evidence that it was you."

"They burned. And it wasn't me." Your eye widened as you realized the implications. You didn't help her. Neither did either of the others. That left very few people who would either care enough to rescue one decent detective and only one could make her smile with that glint. That glint she had when she looked at the captain of your unit, way back when; the one where you couldn't tell if she wanted him or wanted him _dead_.

You couldn't help the growl that escaped your throat. You wanted the fucker that messed with your boss dead, and in so many painful ways that you're fairly certain you'd have to be tossed into jail for just thinking them. But someone beat you to the punch and left you with the aftermath – patching together a woman made of sinew and toughness, made for trucking it with the boys and beating them at their own game. You've got to help her through the shakes you know she's going to have tonight, though the nightmares you're almost certain she'll have, flashbacks of her years as a sniper; the only one she'll even talk to about those is you. You're in for a long week, maybe two, filled with sleepless nights curled beside the only woman you actually trust not to stab you in your back while you sleep.

Okay, maybe she's not the only woman, but she's your fucking family, and you'd do anything for her.

"Christ, fine. I'll lend you some of my clothes to sleep in, and I'm pretty certain you've got a spare suit here," you hear yourself say. You tug her hand, making her stand and walk her to your room. You delicately force her to sit on your bed – you know she's not made of glass, and you know she knows you know, but she indulges you anyway, sitting on your bed and looking at you expectantly. You rummage around in your closet, tossing a worn pair of pants and faded black undershirt at her. She catches them one handedly, dropping the blanket off her shoulders. Stripping her men's shirt from her body, she tosses it at you, and that's when you really notice the blood stains. You growl again, and she starts unwinding the fabric she wears around her torso. You wait for her to toss that at you too, and you drop both items in an unceremonious pile at the foot of the bed. You watch her pull your undershirt on over her lean frame before she flops backward on your bed. She sighs and wiggles out of her pants, before dragging the ones you threw her on.

You stay clear until she beckons you with a look that tells you to move your ass. So you do. She's curled up at the head of your bed, bad eye against the mattress, and she's not talking any more. You have a feeling she's not going to talk about it for a good while, and you know she hasn't given you all of the details. But that doesn't matter as you lay down in front of her so she can see you and put your arm around her shoulders and draw her in close.

She hides her face in the crook of your neck like she hasn't done in over a decade, and you wrap your arms around her and half lay yourself on her, protecting her from things you both know aren't there. It makes you feel better about not being able to help her earlier. She's taller than you, which doesn't mean much in the long run, and yet sometimes you have to be the bigger person.

Hardy-har-har.

You stay awake until you feel her drift off to sleep, nestled in your arms. Then you stay awake longer. You stay awake long enough to growl at the person you know is watching the two of you.

"Get the fuck out of my apartment," you hiss, low and soft so you don't wake your boss.

"M-my ap-pologies. I-I simply w-wanted t-to m-make sure our m-mutual f-friend m-made it somewhere s-safe," the person stuttered.

"And as you can clearly fucking see, she is. Now get the fuck out."

The man bobbed his head, saying, "I shall, um, t-take my leave n-now. C-could you p-possibly t-t-tell her sh-she's inv-vited f-for t-tea?" You glower at him, not looking away and making him shrink back into the shadows. Fearsome mobster your ass. "Ah. W-well. R-right. G-goodbye."

He disappears in a puff of shadow magic and you sigh. Of all the mobsters your boss and friend could have gotten herself wrapped up with, it had to be _that one_? He was the one you wanted to know about her least. After his boss, anyway. If _that_ bastard ever found out, he was going to die. Painfully. Even if you had to go against her wishes to not slip back into the role of heartless bastard and cold-blooded killer. You know she'd be pissed about that.

Your sigh ruffles her close-cropped hair. She shivers and curls closer into you.

Fuck.

Whatever happened spooked her, and you weren't happy with it. You were going to have to find out who did it and what they did, and probably feed their corpses - what was left anyway - to something horrible, mostly so that you felt better about everything.

You doze off, getting a little sleep, only to wake up two hours later to the sound of her screams and the feeling of her shaking in your arms.

It was going to be a _long_ few weeks.


End file.
